


How Sam Wilson learned to stop worrying and love rooftop tag

by Aegir



Series: Break-ins and Break-outs [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hallucinations, Humor, I feel SHIELD Is Still Terrible should be a tag, M/M, SHIELD Is Still Terrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 13:16:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4878286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aegir/pseuds/Aegir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Everyone knows Captain America wouldn’t play rooftop tag,” says Steve, “Captain America is a model of responsibility.”</p><p>In which Sam hasn't had enough coffee, Steve is still Very Unhappy with SHIELD, Bucky supports Steve being Very Unhappy with SHIELD and there are pink giraffes.  Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Sam Wilson learned to stop worrying and love rooftop tag

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't intend 'Five times...' to be the start of a series, but then I read about the Agents of SHIELD series finale, and I really needed to write Steve and Bucky reacting to it, even if only half-seriously. Due to me being slow and and a bit of background for this turning into another fic which needed posting first, it's only just ready for posting. So this is the third of a series. but should make sense if you haven't read the first two.
> 
> Pairings are background only, and no AoS characters actually appear. Also no giraffes are harmed.

Sam hasn’t had enough coffee for this.

“You didn’t have to come over,” Steve says, irritatingly cheerful.

“I wouldn’t have had to come over if you answered your damn phone,” Sam says. “It’s because you didn’t answer your damn phone I got Ms Potts calling me before I’d even had my morning run,” (he’d been going to skip the run after last night’s date with Sharon, but Steve doesn’t need to know that). “Ms Potts is a hard person to say no to, it’s like getting people to do stuff is her superpower.”

“I still think Pepper’s fussing too much.”

“You’ve gone viral on YouTube, Steve!   Two lunatics playing rooftop tag across DC while throwing a giant metal discus around gets noticed! I can’t think how nobody’s spotted it’s your shield yet.”

“Everyone knows Captain America wouldn’t play rooftop tag,” says Steve, “Captain America is a model of responsibility.”

“And Steve Rogers is a reckless punk.”

“It was a coping mechanism, Sam,” and Sam knows Steve’s playing him, with that wide-eyed and earnest look, but it still works. Steve projects innocent and wholesome far too well, no wonder he’s been worth his weight in gold as propaganda. “You’ve told me I should find one that isn’t destroying punching bags. Bucky doesn’t like that anyway, he always wants to shoot things, and people notice if he gets perfect scores at the range too often.”

Barnes isn’t in evidence, but Sam doesn’t take that as a bad sign. Barnes’ latest step in self-reclamation is taking lie-ins. “Bucky never was a morning person,” Steve had told Sam. “When we shared a place before I used to get stuff thrown at me if I woke him up at weekends.” The part-healed hickeys showing on Steve’s neck are evidence that rooftop tag wasn’t all they did last night, and sure, Sam’s happy for them, but that’s reckless too, the public guessing that Captain America has a lover is going to unleash one hell of a speculation storm.

“Anyway, I was going to call you,” Steve says, still annoyingly chipper. “We might need some back-up on this.”

“HYDRA?”

“I wish,” Steve’s smile fades. “This came from Nat. It’s why we needed to let stuff hang out.” He pushes a printout across to Sam.

Sam’s brain doesn’t catch up to his mouth for a while. “Yeah, that’s what I said,” is Steve’s comment when he’s finished cursing.

“Man, this is…,” Sam remembers he’s supposed to be the voice of reason, because clearly nobody else is going to be. “What were you planning on?”

“Taking it out,” Steve says simply.

“Look,” Sam marshals his arguments. “I get it, Steve. Hell, there’s no way they should still have that. But picking at things piecemeal like this isn’t the way.”

“Then tell me what is,” Steve says, and he’s doing the Captain America righteous jaw-clench now. “I’m serious, Sam. I’ve tried talking to Coulson, and he’s too stubborn to listen. When this is done we can sit down, all of us, and have a strategy meeting and see if we can figure out a better way. But I’m not putting this off. Don’t you keep telling me it’s OK to be selfish sometimes?”

“I was thinking something along the lines of two weeks in Hawaii! Not running missions against SHIELD as well as HYDRA.”

“I’m not going to have any peace while they still have it, and nor is Bucky. Just the thought of it… I’m only glad I didn’t know SHIELD had it when Coulson kept locking him up.”

“He wouldn’t have used it on me.” Sam jumps embarrassingly, because Barnes has done that thing again, where he just appears silently behind someone. “He wanted intel too much.”

“It’s easy to think that now,” Steve says. “I want it gone.”

“No arguments here,” Barnes says. He gives Sam a nod that might be friendly, it’s hard to tell but Sam is an optimist.

“OK, OK!” Sam throws up his hands, because obviously the only question here is whether they’re going to do it with him or without him, and it might just be a good idea to have someone along whose idea of how to deal with emotions is a bit more complicated than ‘hit something until the messy feelings go away’. Not that Sam doesn’t know he’s hopelessly out of his depth, but he can’t really turn the caretaker side of himself off, and that side is saying he should go along as a safety net. The rest of him is just looking forward to the adrenaline hit.

“Thanks, Sam,” says Steve. “How about tomorrow night?”

“I’m seeing Sharon tomorrow night.” So now Sam’s discussing whether he should break his date with a girlfriend who works for the CIA for to go destroy stuff that doesn’t belong to him. It wasn’t quite how he’d thought hanging out with Captain America would go.

“Thursday, then?” If it’s Thursday, it must be breaking and entering. Just roll with it.

“So we’ll meet at the usual sushi place first,” Steve is saying.

“Would you like some tea?” says Barnes, who has been calmly getting his breakfast.

“Coffee,” Sam says firmly. Both these guys are lousy at making coffee, Barnes doesn’t drink it, having read on the internet it’s bad for anger management, and Steve just seems to like horrible coffee, but he’ll take anything for a caffeine hit right now.

 

“I liked _Phantom Menace_ ,” Steve is saying.

“You can’t be serious,” says Sam.

“The whole film is about how good intentions go horribly wrong. It’s great, because you know how it ends, but the characters don’t. And it’s got the pod-race.”

“Not everyone dreams about pod-racing,” Barnes says, doing that come out of nowhere thing again, although Sam is more prepared for it this time, because at least Barnes is meant to be scouting. “It’s clear, there was one of the multiples, but he just left in a car. Now there’s just two guys browsing E-Bay on a tablet.”

“Multiples?” said Sam

“Agents who all look alike.” Barnes does the right-shoulder shrug, and draws a gun, “Let’s go.”

“Wait, you can’t…” Sam begins.

“It’s one of their weapons, they call it a night-night gun, which is a name invented by someone really trying to not say stun-gun. Won’t use it if I don’t have to, but it doesn’t damage anyone permanently.”

“OK.” He should have trusted Steve on this one.

In the end Steve says “Sam, will you keep lookout,” and Sam nods.

Sam knows how to watch and wait. Much of pararescue was waiting until you were needed after all. Today he’s pretty antsy though, because what the hell is he supposed to do if someone from SHIELD does show up? Sam is a medic, he knows very well what a lie the TV trope of a harmless knockout blow with no consequences is. Should have asked Barnes for the night-night gun, though given that it was created by SHIELD, does he really trust it won’t have any bad after effects?

It’s so much easier when people are shooting at you.

And perhaps what he’s really worried about is that it would be a damn sight too easy to shoot someone from SHIELD (with a stun gun admittedly). Because what in all the seven hells and heavens above them could justify SHIELD still having mindwipe technology?

Nothing. Nothing could justify it. Steve was right. SHIELD had learned nothing from Insight, still holding themselves above the law and basic human decency both.

 

Barnes comes back first, with a disturbingly blank look that makes Sam stiffen.

“Where’s Steve?” he asks, and hopes it doesn’t come out too sharp.

“Writing a note to SHIELD,” Barnes blinks, and a little of the blankness fades. Sam notices his right hand is torn and bleeding. “He said it was only polite.”

He was grabbing the chance to be a troll, in other words. It’s such a Steve Rogers’ move Sam is reassured, even before Steve swings along the corridor to join them.

“Well,” he says, “That’s done.” He looks more than anything like a man who has laid down something heavy.

Just at that moment two guys in SHIELD uniform come round the corner arguing about Mario Kart. Sam tenses, finger on the trigger. He wants to shoot, and he doesn’t trust that he wants to, these guys might not even know what they had down the corridor.

“What the…!” It’s Steve exclaiming.

There are three possibilities, Sam tells himself. One: somebody dosed him with hallucinogenic drugs when he wasn’t looking. Two: there really are two bright pink giraffes in the room with them. Three: Barnes has managed to repair that ancient piece of Howard Stark’s cloaking tech they’d liberated from a former SHIELD museum.

“You could give a guy some warning, Barnes,” he hisses, on the assumption it’s the last.

Behind him Steve starts to laugh. “You didn’t tell me you’d liberated **that** , Buck! Of all the things…”

The two SHIELD techs have jumped back against the wall, clutching each other’s shoulders. “I knew we shouldn’t have eaten that cheese,” one of them gasps.

Captain America hefts his shield, and gives the two guys a cheerful wave as their group strolls past with Barnes whistling the theme from _Jaws_.

“Tell me you didn’t like _Attack of the Clones_ ,” Sam says once they’re well away.

“You really want a twenty minute rant on the Tuskan massacre?” says Barnes. “Because we’re in for it now.”

 

Sam is on the phone to Sharon

“So this gossip magazine called, they’re doing a run called _Superheroes Exposed_ , wanted to know if Great-Aunt Peggy gave me any racy anecdotes on Cap.”

“Did she?”

“Nope. Aunt Peggy made keeping secrets her life’s work. Heads up in case they start on you.”

“I’m embarrassingly clean. Also discretion on wings.” Pity really, Sam could make a mint selling what he knows about Captain America’s love-life if he wasn’t one of the good guys. “Sounds like a rubbish series anyway. I guarantee 9/10ths of anything they print on Natasha she’ll have made up herself, and they’ll have to build a rocket to dig the dirt on Thor. As for Stark…”

“… the only way he could get any more exposed is if he did a streaker run at the Superbowl. If there’s anyone who’s had sex with Stark and hasn’t sold their story already, with pictures, they should be preserved as an endangered species.”

“Sharon Carter, don’t tell me you read this stuff!” Sam may have overdone the fake outrage, but Sharon plays along.

“For work purposes. When I was at SHIELD. It’s a tough job, but someone had to do it.”

The doorbell rings. Damn. “Gotta go,” Sam says, “Call you later.”

It’s Steve and Barnes with pizza. “I already ate,” says Sam.

“You don’t mind if we do?” Steve says. Hanging out with supersoldiers means watching them eating a lot. Sam takes a slice in the end because he really likes anchovies.

“So,” Steve says. “I’ve been thinking about SHIELD.”

“Yes?” And that’s the voice that means there’s something crazy coming up. Sam’s adrenaline is rushing already.

“We need to expose it. Again. Put everything the new SHIELD have done out there.”

“And that’s going to make it all OK?”

“Sam, the whole reason HYDRA was able to use SHIELD was that neither of them believed in letting people choose. SHIELD kept everything secret, made all the decisions, and justified it as regular people not being smart enough to know the truth. HYDRA just took it one step further. Take the secrecy away, and it may not be perfect, but at least it will have to justify its choices. Millions nearly died because Fury was able to build secret helicarriers, and now he’s doing it again.”

“Now, hold it, you needed that helicarrier in Sokovia.”

“We wouldn’t have if Stark hadn’t started channelling HYDRA, and decided he was entitled to impose a fleet of drones on the world. It was probably SHIELD put the idea into his head in the first place, Fury told me there was Stark’s tech in Project Insight.   Even so, I swear if he hadn’t been Howard’s kid and messed up by that business in New York…” Steve takes a bite of pizza as if it had personally offended him. “We can have evacuation without all the damned secrecy.   Let SHIELD go on this way and there’ll be another Project Insight along in a few years.”

“Don’t rush it, Steve,” says Barnes who has been concentrating on the pizza slices with pepperoni. He sounds like he’s said this several times already, and Sam never expected to hear a guy who plays rooftop Frisbee telling Captain America to look before he leaps.

“I’m not going to rush it,” Steve says. “I’ve already called Nat, and I’m going to ask Wanda if she wants in. We’ll plan it first. I want to make sure we get everything out there.”

“Everything?” Sam can’t help his eyes turning to Barnes. ‘Everything’ may well include files on the Winter Soldier. There hadn’t been much in Nat’s original file dump, nothing that could identify him. But Coulson probably had records.

“Everything,” Barnes says, and he looks even paler than usual, but his voice is sure. “We can’t cherry-pick. This needs doing, I’ll take my chances.”

Steve reaches out and takes Barnes’ hand, the metal one, Sam notices. “I’ll get Natasha to help set up a line of retreat for us if things go badly. “ Sam doesn’t miss the ‘us’ and from the look he gives Steve Barnes doesn’t either. Steve just Looks right back. “We’re not having this argument again, Buck. Besides, Sam’s been on at me to take a vacation.”

“You’d just… stop being Cap?” It might not be the best moment to ask, but Sam doesn’t think of that until after he’s asked.

Steve answers Sam, but he’s looking at Barnes, “You keep telling me to try being selfish.”

Sam hopes it won’t come to that. He’d really miss Steve Roger’s brand of crazy.

“I’m in,” he says. “Will it be a Wings job?”

“Don’t know yet,” says Steve, “I’m hoping we won’t have to get physical. In the meantime, if you fancy an out of town game of shield tossing tag, I think the wings would add a lot to that.”

 

“OK,” Sam, breathless, dirty and with a bruise on his arm from a shield fumble, says later, having snapped a picture of Captain America ripping open a water bottle with his teeth to send Sharon. “I’m on board with taking SHIELD down. Again. But if you’re going to try and take down everyone who might build a drone fleet I need advanced warning. Because Tony Stark has some really weird inventions.”

“We won’t need to take down Tony,” Steve says. “I’ve already made sure he won’t try another Ultron.”

“How?”

“Oh, that was simple. I called Pepper Potts.”

**Author's Note:**

> Author has no strong feelings either way on Phantom Menace, but believes Steve Rogers would identify strongly with little Anakin, while not liking his teenaged incarnation at all.


End file.
